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'The Bletchley Circle'

When: 9 p.m. Sunday

Network: PBS

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For much of the past century, any female detective in literature seemed to owe at least part of her character to Agatha Christie's Miss Marple. When "Prime Suspect's" Jane Tennison came along, it gave mystery writers a new template for female sleuths.

Both of those icons are alive and well in the four women who go after a necrophiliac serial killer in 1952 London in "Bletchley Circle," a three-part mystery miniseries coming to PBS Sunday night.

During World War II, the four - Susan (Anna Maxwell Martin, "Bleak House"), Millie (Rachael Stirling, "Women in Love"), Lucy (Sophie Rundle) and Jean (Julie Graham, "Lapland") - worked in the decryption office at Bletchley Park. Their work was so secret that Susan hasn't even told her husband, Timothy (Mark Dexter) what she used to do.

Decryption work was not only exciting for the women, it gave them a chance to use their individual skills. Susan is brilliant at seeing patterns and solving puzzles, Millie speaks 14 languages, Lucy has a photographic memory, and Jean was able to use her leadership skills as the head of the decoding unit.

But post-war life has put the women back into what were then considered appropriate roles. Susan's husband, a war-wounded civil servant in the Department of Transport, buys her crossword puzzles to keep her occupied at home when she's not tending to their two children; Jean works in a library; and Millie is a waitress in a diner. Lucy is married to a man who beats her.

After several young women are found murdered, Susan sees a pattern that Scotland Yard can't and tries unsuccessfully to press her theories on Deputy Commissioner Wainwright (Michael Gould). Although Timothy tells her to stay home and tend to her knitting, Susan is convinced she's onto something and tracks down her former Bletchley Park comrades to work the case with her.

As a whodunit, "Bletchley Circle" doesn't amount to much. The killer is spotted fairly early on, for one thing, and toward the end of the third episode, Susan suddenly turns from being the smartest woman in the room to the dumbest by taking a risky action.

The real theme of "Bletchley Circle" is about women's roles in society in the United Kingdom in the early 1950s. Timothy is angry that Susan won't tell him where she disappears to every day, and Millie's boss at the diner says she can have the day off if she does him a little favor in return. And of course, the cops indulge Susan and her quaint little theories with increasing impatience.

The obviousness of each woman's situation actually poses a challenge to the four actresses in the "Circle," but fortunately, they are more than equal to it. The performances are superb and make "Bletchley Circle" more than the sum of its pedantic parts.